Gamers Not Pleased With In-Game Ads In Battlefield 4

Dave Thier
, ContributorI write about video games and technology.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Boot up Battlefield 4 and, thee days, you'll probably actually get to play it. Considering this game's history, that's a win right there. But recently, gamers have been noticing something else: ads. EA has been running ads for the Need For Speed movie, which, considering the fact that a premium subscription already costs over $100, some gamers are less than happy about. Here are a few choice tweets:

Dave Braddigan: Remember when people had a modicum of shame or self-awareness? Neither does EA.

Kit Emmett: @EA @battlefield: I had to double check it wasn't April 1st when I read this. You guys are unbelievable. Pathetic.

In-game ads are the kind of thing we've become accustomed to in sports games, where advertising in the stadium actually contributes to verisimilitude. These sorts of things are rarer, though I distinctly remember seeing ads on the billboards in Rainbow Six: Vegas. In both of those examples, the ads are part of the game world, however, whereas in Battlefield 4 they're pop-ups.

I wouldn't expect this sort of thing to go away. There's a backlash, most certainly, just like there is with microtransactions, but major publishers have every incentive to normalize this practice. The central conflict here always has to do with what makes a $60 box game different from a F2P title. With the latter, we expect ads, consumables, boost hats, and all those other things associated with making money off of a free product. People paying $60 for a game expect immunity from those strategies because, after all, the company already got paid. That's the thing with publicly traded corporations though -- it never does seem enough.

For all of our new-era monetization techniques, I tend to live by a simple rule: if it doesn't interfere with gameplay, I really don't mind. That time between matches is dead anyway. This case is particular, however. EA has botched Battlefield 4, from bugs, to server issues, to months and months of essential unplayability. It doesn't now need any more bad player sentiment, especially from core fans, if it wants to keep this franchise strong. If were EA, I'd let Battlefield run its course. It needs regular updates, time for people to play it and forget about past missteps, and no new reasons to rage.